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We need to talk about Cheltenham. For so many racing fans and those directly involved, the Festival is the great beacon of light heading into a new year.
It was on this day 12 months ago that the World Health Organisation released to media outlets a Disease Outbreak News report with information on a disease emerging from Wuhan, China.
Batted away by most on this side of the world, the extent of the threat gradually grew with each passing day and, as it transpired, the Cheltenham Festival was the major public event caught smack-bang in the middle of the point where action needed to be taken.
All throughout that lead-up, racing fans, myself included, hovered over the ‘Will Cheltenham Go Ahead’ market on Betfair, desperately hoping for the ‘Yes’ number to get smaller and the ‘No’ bigger.
Some may call that narrow mindedness but the full extent of Covid’s effect on the world was only a fraction of what it is now, and, while the Festival going ahead did significant reputational damage to the sport, with the British Government supporting Cheltenham's decision to race, it would have been difficult at the time to call it off, so close to the opening day. Hindsight is 20:20.
Hindsight
With that hindsight, what for 2021? Speaking on the Nick Luck Daily Podcast yesterday morning, Jockey Club Cheltenham director Ian Renton said: “I think we have now come to accept that it is going to be a very, very different Festival and the team are just concentrating on ensuring we have the best possible racing, and looking at everything we can do in terms of encouraging the right horses to be with us, and to produce perfect ground in order to have a fantastic four days racing, even if people will be viewing it on television rather than in person."
Asked whether he expects to have sort of significant crowd, Renton replied: “I think we will be parking that in the next week or two. We’ve been pretty realistic in our expectations over the last few months but, as we get closer to the Festival itself, one realises the small hope we had is fast disappearing and we will soon have to be wholly realistic and accept that very small numbers at best will be present.
“I would certainly hope that at the very least we’ll have owners present to watch their horses run and hopefully go back to the days of December when we had a crowd of 2,000 people on each of those days. That is the sort of expectation we’re currently looking at.”
That would seem like an ultimate best case scenario at this stage with Covid-19 numbers soaring to peak totals on both sides of the Irish Sea. There were 258 recorded cases of Covid-19 in Britain on the first day of Cheltenham last year. The latest British Covid daily case number was 58,784. With measures well established, the public consciousness of Covid is clearly evident now and, while 10 weeks is enough time to suggest that the picture could look significantly different by March 16th, surely there is some chance that Cheltenham and indeed racing itself is in danger of a shutdown.
Elite sport in Britain escaped any sort of shutdown from the new measures announced by Boris Johnson yesterday evening but it was notable that the British Boxing Board of Control took it upon themselves to suspend all boxing events for the month of January on account of Covid.
Football
Football, with its huge elite level participation rate, could be seen as the measure for other sports. Premier League officials have insisted they have confidence in their Covid-19 protocols despite having seen four fixtures postponed since the start of the December due to outbreaks which has led to suggestions that a halt to the season could be in the offing.
The players and staff at all 72 English Football League clubs are being tested this week, which could well provide a very stark picture.
With this in mind, the best racing can hope for is surely to just be allowed to continue behind closed doors, but with Cheltenham, what happens inside the white rails may not be unscathed either.
With a travel ban currently in place between Britain and Ireland, amidst an accelerating rate of cases, you would have to question whether there will be Irish horses at the Festival, or at least a smaller number than usual.
The bulk of the Irish challenge will be provided by Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, who have to send a significant number of staff to Cheltenham for the week to care for teams of 40-plus horses. Whether that is doable in 10 weeks' time is anyone’s guess and bear in mind that this will be the first major racing event post-Brexit transition period, which could make it a logistical nightmare.
Nick Luck asked Ian Renton about this and he replied: “I spoke to Brian Kavanagh just before Christmas and he was very optimistic that there should be no issue with horses coming over, once we’re over the first week or so of the new year. We’ll continue to talk to the Irish, talk to the French and the authorities over here to do everything we can to ensure that passage for Irish and French horses is as easy as possible.
“People are precluded (from moving between countries) at the moment and I’m sure there will be significant issues even going into March. People may have to self-isolate when they return home but I’m sure we will manage to get a number of the Irish participants coming over in March.”
A glance at the betting for some of the main betting races at the Festival illustrates just how poor the event would come for the absence of Irish challengers. So bad, you’d have to question whether the Festival would be worth going ahead at all.
The hope is that new restrictive measures brought in by both the Irish and British Governments help to cull the rapid spread of the virus. But it should go without saying, there are no guarantees.
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